May 14, 2016

When it comes to converting something drawn to a laser etched image there are often quite a few steps needed. Martin Raynsford has built this Drawing To Laser Engraving System to allow him to easily go from drawing to laser etched images by using a bit of hardware and some custom software. Of course you can do this type of thing manually like was done in the Halloween Hanging Mobile Project many moons ago but there is something great when the process is automated.

“The third and final project from this years maker faire was a webcam capture program that would easily digitize children’s drawings and then send them down to the laser cutter for engraving. The webcam holder with led lighting to illuminate the drawing. I used a c# wrapper for the open CV library to capture images from the webcam, a little bit of filtering to remove pixels that weren’t black enough. The image was then converted to G Code, and transferred to a GRBL controller that was wired into the Greyfin laser cutter. The G Code simply drives the laser to the next black pixel and burns a single dot for each pixel, repeat for each black pixel in the image.”